The present invention relates to an improved electric percussion instrument having an electric pickup unit. More particularly, the present invention relates to an improvement in a vibration pickup system for electric percussion instruments in which mechanical vibrations of at least one drum head are collected by at least one vibration responsive pickup unit and converted into corresponding electric signals for generation of musical tones after proper electric processing.
With the recent development of electric string instruments (such as electric pianos and electric guitars), there has been an increasing demand for electric percussion and wind instruments which can be played with the electric string instruments in order to have a balance in tone volume during musical performances.
In order to fulfill this requirement, percussion instruments are normally provided with vibration responsive pickup units which are attached directly to or arranged near a vibratory part of the instrument. The vibration responsive pickup unit recieves mechanical vibrations generated by the vibratory part and converts the vibrations into corresponding electric signals which are electrically processed to generate musical tones. In this way, the mechanical vibrations of the vibratory part of the percussion instrument can be received directly and more colorful tones can be generated than possible using natural tones caused by pneumatic vibrations. This also results in a remarkable amplification of the tone volume since the obtained electric signals are processed through one or more electric amplifiers.
Using a simple switching operation, an electric percussion instrument can be converted into a natural percussion instrument. When using the instrument as an electric percussion instrument, it is desirable to eliminate the generation of natural tones which are not electrically picked up. In practice, a mute assembly is attached to the instrument in order to partly or fully mute the natural tones and generate electric tones only. In operation, the mute assembly is brought into tight contact with either surface of the drum head. Change in contact pressure between the mute assembly and the drum head influence the vibration of the drum head and causes a corresponding change in tone colour of the musical tones generated by the instrument.
With the conventional pickup system, it is impossible to pick up mechanical vibrations of the drum head and at the same time eliminate the natural tone since the vibration responsive pickup unit is usually arranged remote from the mute element. Intended muted tones cannot be picked up by such a system. This seriously deteriorates the acoustic effect of the percussion instruments. Further, when the vibration responsive pickup unit is mounted on the drum frame of the instrument, external vibratory noises transmitted to the drum frame are also undesirably collected by the vibration responsive pickup unit on the drum frame, thereby non-negligibly degrading the acoustic effect of the instrument.